


don't wanna walk alone (so lets get married)

by lunar_peach



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Romantic Fluff, Wedding Fluff, hello im back, idk what else to tag this, wedding au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 03:02:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18460139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunar_peach/pseuds/lunar_peach
Summary: a fix it fic where ash is okay and they get married :")





	don't wanna walk alone (so lets get married)

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this instead of an essay i have due on monday so yeehaw but you can blame mitski's cover of lets get married for that.  
> (oh man, mitski, we're really in it this time)

“He’s hurt,” the woman speaks into the phone, voice sterile and clear. She’s done this before. “He’s hurt, but he’s alive. They found him bleeding out in the New York Public Library. Sir, you’re listed as a family member. We found your number in his phone. We need for you to come down and help to…” 

The words fade into nothingness. 

It’s a split second decision. A monumental one that resta solely on Alex’s shoulders. The woman on the phone keeps speaking but he doesn’t listen. All Alex can do is watch as the back of Eiji’s head moved further and further into the crowd of people hoping to board their flights on time. He shoves the phone into Kong’s hands and takes off running as hard as he can, past Max, past Jessica, past everyone, screaming a name that no longer feels strange on his lips. 

“Eiji! Wait! Eiji-” 

He hears him. Turns his head in that craned and delicate way they’d all grown to love in the months and years they’d known each other. They lock eyes, and Eiji says something to Ibe, who refuses to stop. 

“It’s Ash!” He screams for the world to hear. “He’s hurt!” 

Now Ibe has to stop, like the rest of the world. Because they all know, that even if he hadn’t, Eiji would have found a way to make it back to him one way or another. He’d crawl back to Ash if he had to. Ibe looks down at the teary-eyed boy below him, takes a deep breath and turns back, towards Alex, as fast as he can with Eiji in the wheelchair. 

“Take me to him,” Eiji tells him, voice as soft as the first day he met him, but more determined than he’d ever heard. “Now.” 

He and Ibe share a look between them and then he relinquishes power, leaving Eiji in his care. Ibe moves out from behind the wheelchair and kneels before him. 

“I’ll go with Max and Jessica, alright? We’ll meet you there.” 

Eiji nods, and they’re off, back towards the exit. 

Alex doesn’t stop, not once. He continues to scream, unaffected by the stares it attracts. 

“Bones! Get the car!”

\--- 

He looks like something out of a fairytale. Laying there with tubes and wires sprouting from and into him. No longer mortal. No longer human. Maybe he’d never been. He is a knight and dragon hybrid with promises of protection and threats all the same. Even as he lays dormant, there’s a firey look to him, something still is awake deep inside him. As if some witty remark is playing inside his closed mouth, ready to fly out once his slumber ceased. 

When that would be was uncertain. It has already three days and all Eiji has done is stare at him behind the plexiglass of his ICU. His heartbeat is steady. His vitals are fine. Still, he sleeps. 

Still, Eiji watches. What more is there to do? 

The nurses talk about them. They’re not subtle at hiding the newspapers and magazines with both their faces plastered on the covers. _Young Gang Leader_. _Lovelorn Japanese Teen_. _Lovers_. They whisper the headlines. 

\--- 

Every day, he tries to forget what happened the last time they were both in a hospital. He tries to stop thinking about how their roles are reversed and how that isn’t fair. It’s never been fair. 

\---

It seems he will have to leave. The State Department and Japanese Consulate grow ever impatient. Over and over and over they tell them much can’t be done to extend their visas. Ibe fights. So does Max. No one budges. Ash needs him, even if he’s not awake. Even if he can’t hear everything Eiji whispers behind the glass. He needs him- they need each other. 

They call their lawyer. 

“There’s not much we can do. They understand the circumstances, but this is how the system works. You’ll have to leave and apply again to return. Unless there’s some sort of emergency, we can’t do much about the situation.” 

An emergency. What was this if not that? 

He ponders that question for hours while browsing the U.S State Department website and reading up on the many rules surrounding their visas. While Ibe packs his bags, Eiji devises a plan. If they wanted an emergency, that is exactly what he’d give them. 

That very night, Eiji throws himself down a flight of stairs. 

His stitches open and release a puddle of near black blood around him. His left arm snaps in two places like twigs on a forest floor. Everyone is mad at him, but only initially. They understand why after all. A broken arm is nothing to him if it means he gets to stay. 

He and Ash become floormates when they move him out of the Intensive Care ward. 

\---

“Damn, you’ve got guts,” Bones whispers as he doodles a skull on Eiji’s cast. 

“Guts?” Alex speaks up from behind him. “He could’ve gotten himself killed! What would we have told Boss then?”

\--- 

When he’s allowed to move, he resumes his place by Ash’s side, this time with him in his room. The nurses tell him it’s good for people to talk to those in comas. They said it was okay to touch him too. Something about restimulation. He can’t quite remember everything they’d told him. 

Still, he reads to him in choppy English, or in refined Japanese. Eiji teaches him new words in his native tongue, sure as the sky is blue that Ash is listening, even unconsciously. He’ll have to learn _some_ Japanese if he wants to go back with him. 

Sometimes Eiji doesn’t talk at all. Sometimes he just holds his hand and waits and hopes and prays for those bright green eyes to open up into his. 

\---

“Michael’s coming tomorrow. He asked Max to bring him to see you. So, you better wake up. Don’t leave your new little brother waiting like that.” 

\---

Christmas comes and goes. Hope lingers in him, despite it all. 

\---

It wavers.

“I’ve decided I’m mad at you,” Eiji declares one day after lunch. He closes the book he’d been reading and leans back into his chair, unclasping their hands. “There’s so much that needs fixing and you’re not here to do it… and you shouldn’t have to do it, but you’re the only one that knows how. Ash, Alex has started turning to _me_ for help. And I wish I _could_ help him, but I’m no good. And- and- and I’m leaving soon. And I could try to hurt myself again but-” 

“Don’t-” Eiji freezes in his seat, unable to move as a phantom rises before him. “Don’t you… even try it.” 

\--- 

He’s taken out of the room and sent back to his own when the team of nurses and doctors storm into his room. He doesn’t fight them, he goes peacefully. Hearing Ash’s voice, after weeks of thinking he never would again, was enough to set his soul to rest. While they run their tests and ask Ash all sorts of questions, Eiji lays down and sleeps. He sleeps and dreams of a future that is possible. A future so real he can hear the cringey indie music playing in their first apartment. He can see the children and the animals they will love and live within their home somewhere in the countryside somewhere. 

_He’s awake. We made it. We both made it._

\---

He wakes up with Ash curled up next to him on his hospital bed. He’s in a hospital gown and his hair is a mess, but there’s something about him in this state that tugs at his heartstrings and reminds him he’d throw himself off a million stairwells to stay by his side. It occurs to Eiji that seeing him like this, peaceful, rested, and happy, is all he’s ever wanted. 

He brushes a loose strand of hair out of his face and sinks into his embrace and there is no better feeling in the world than the softness and heat rising from their bodies. He closes his eyes once more. 

“Eiji.” 

“You’re awake?” he asks. He’s awake and that makes him blush. They’ve never quite had the time to sit with their tenderness. It’s different when death isn’t a threat looming around every corner. 

“I never fell asleep.”

Ash’s voice is full of something Eiji can’t quite place. 

“Oh,” Eiji replies. 

“I love you,” he tells him, breathless. His arm stretches from his side, over Eiji, and pulls him closer. The sun peaks through the blind in the room, golden and brighter than it’s ever risen before. 

“I love you too.” The words practically pirouette out from his mouth, like they’d been practicing their debut for as long as they’d known each other. “I missed you so much.”

They don’t say anything else, just watch the sun begin to rise. Ash kisses his hands and Eiji can’t help but run shaking fingertips over his face. He traces his lips. His nose. The constellation of freckles scattered over his cheeks. 

There would be no more pain. No more crying. Not for the wrong reasons. Not for Ash. Never again. 

“Eiji,” Ash whispered. 

“Mm?”

“Eiji, let’s get married.” 

\---

Shadows at dawn, they run off together, all the way down to the chapel on the first floor. The minister greets them with a warm smile, he himself just arriving to open the small chapel. They ask to be married. He asks for a marriage license. They explain best they can their situation and what they intend to do and he agrees to help them, but not before asking Eiji to show him an ID to confirm his age. That makes Ash laugh, hard and loud and healthy. 

The minister leads their way inside and asks to give him a minute to dress and prepare all that needs preparing. In that time, they run off to the gift shop to buy two cheap silver rings and matching pink and blue t-shirts that read _“Doing Good and Getting Better”_. They change in the bathroom and serve each other as mirrors in the hall, combing hair back and wiping the sleep out of each other's eyes. Eiji tucks a piece of blond hair here and there. Ash loses himself in his eyes while trying to do the same. They can’t stop touching. They don’t want to stop. 

Two nurses step in as witnesses. They stand before the minister as he begins the ceremony. Eiji means to listen. So does Ash. But there is no use trying to pay attention to anything other than each other. They hold hands the entire way through. Cast and all. 

The time for vows arrives and blank stares cover the room. They had thought of rings, but not of vows. The minister looks at them, patiently waiting for one of them to start. Ash decides to speak from the heart. The only way Eiji deserves to be spoken to. 

“Ever-” He chokes up, voice breaking like a piece of fine china against hardwood floors. Eiji squeezes his hands and smiles in that sweet, timeless way he loves so much. “Okumura Eiji, ever since I met you, even through the darkest times, you’ve been the guiding light to bring me home. Hell, Eiji, you are _home_ to me. We’ve lost people and- and almost each other, but we’re still here and I love you more than I could ever begin to explain. And I vow to love you in that inexplicable way for the rest of my life.” Eiji gingerly wipes away the tears from Ash’s face as beepers and cellphones sound of at the entrance. They’re looking for them no doubt, and they’d quite possible drawn a crowd full of people in charge of finding them, all teary-eyed and smiling near and in the pews. 

“Aslan Jade Callenreese, you are the kindest, bravest… strongest… sweetest, most selfless person I have ever known and it is an honor to call you the one true love of my life. You changed me… my world. And I can’t believe we’re here. And I can’t believe you’re going to love me all that time. And I promise you… I vow to love you and love you and love you all that time too.” 

“And now, the grooms will exchange rings.” 

Ash digs the rings from the pockets of his sweatpants and hands one to Eiji. This time, he goes first. 

“I, Okumura Eiji, present this ring to you, Aslan, as a symbol of my love and eternal devotion to you.” 

“I, Aslan Jade Callenreese, present this ring to you, Eiji, as a symbol of my love and eternal devotion.” 

“Aslan, do you accept this ring and union?” 

“I do.” 

“Eiji, do you accept this ring and union?” 

“I do.” 

"By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and husband. You may now kiss the groom.”

Ash pulls Eiji in close, teasing him with a smile. 

In one swift movement, he dips him and plants one of the infinite kisses he plans to give him over their lifetimes.

**Author's Note:**

> can you tell i haven't been to a wedding in years?  
> leave a comment/kudos :)!
> 
> Follow me for more content on Twitter: @eijinomics


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